Bloodfever

She wrote: You and I are here, but the wind is everywhere. Cast no words upon it you don’t wish followed back to you.

“That’s awfully melodramatic.” I tried to make light of it, if only to dispel the chill inching up my spine.

“That’s one of the first rules we ever learn,” she said with a scathing glance. “I learned it when I was three. You’re old. You should know better.”

I bristled. “I’m not old. Who’d you learn it from?”

“My grandmum.”

“Well, there you have it. I was adopted. Nobody told me anything. I had to learn it all myself and I think I’m doing a bang-up job. How well would you have done on your own?”

She shrugged and gave me a look that said she would have done way better than me because she was so smart and special. Oh, the cockiness of youth. How I missed mine.

“So what’s with the sky?” I pressed. Was I the rat I’d been feeling like and there were owls above my head?

She turned the page to a blank one and wrote another word. Though the ink was pink, the word slashed, dark and ominous, across the page. Hunters, it said. The chill I’d nearly managed to dispel returned as an ice pick, pierced my back, and slid through my heart. Hunters were the terrifying caste of winged Unseelie whose primary purpose was to hunt and kill sidhe-seers.

She snapped the journal shut.

They’ve been spotted, she mouthed.

In Dublin? I mouthed back, horrified, glancing warily at the sky.

She nodded. “What’s your name?”

“Mac,” I said softly. Did I even want my name on the wind? “Yours?”

“Dani. With an i. Mac what?”

“Lane.” That was good enough for now. How strange it was to feel like you didn’t quite own your last name.

“Where can I find you, Mac?”

I started to give her my new cell phone number, but she shook her head briskly. “We stick to the old ways in times like these. Where are you staying?”

I gave her the address of Barrons Books and Baubles. “I work there. For Jericho Barrons.” I searched her face for a sign of recognition. “He’s one of us.”

She gave me a strange look. “You think?”

I nodded and flipped the page in my journal. I wrote, Are there many of us?

It’s not my place to answer your questions, she scribbled. Someone will be in touch soon.

“When?”

“I don’t know. It’s up to them.”

“I need answers. Dani, I’ve seen things. Does your council know what’s going on in this city?”

Her lucent eyes flared and she gave a single violent shake of her head.

I gave her an exasperated look. “Well, tell your ‘someone’ to hurry up. Things are getting worse, fast.” I flipped my journal open again. I’m a Null, I wrote. And I know about the Lord Master and the Sinsar—

The journal was snatched from my hand and the page shredded before I could blink. She’d done it so smoothly and quickly that my pen was still poised in the air above a page that was no longer there, and I was still shaping the letter D.

Nothing normal could move that fast. She’d reacted with inhuman speed. I searched the pert, gamine face. “What are you?”

“Same as you. Latent talents awaken in times of need,” she said, watching me. “You have your talents, I have mine. Every day we learn more about who we used to be and what we are again becoming.”

“You let me catch you,” I accused. She could have outrun me in a heartbeat. Who was I kidding? This kid could probably leap small buildings.

“So?”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “I wasn’t supposed to, but I was curious. Rowena sent a bunch of us out to find you, to learn where you were staying. Naturally, I’m the one that spotted you first. She made it sound like you were very powerful.” She gave me a disdainful look. “I don’t see it.”

“Who’s Rowena?” I had a hunch and didn’t like it.

“Old woman. Silver hair. Looks fragile. Isn’t.”

Just as I’d suspected, the old woman I’d met my first night in Dublin, on the receiving end of her wrath when I’d stared overlong at the first Fae I’d ever seen. Later, she’d stood by and done nothing when V’lane had nearly raped me in the museum, then followed me, insisting I was adopted.

“Take me to her,” I demanded. I’d hated her for tearing my world apart with her truth. I needed more of her truth. She’d called me O’Connor, mentioned someone named Patrona. Did she know where I came from? I almost couldn’t let myself think the next thought; it frightened me as much as it fascinated me, felt like a betrayal of my parents, of all I’d been and done for the past twenty-two years: Did I have relatives somewhere in Ireland? A cousin, an uncle, dare I think it…a sister?

“Rowena will choose the time,” Dani said. When I scowled and opened my mouth to argue, she stepped back and raised her hands. “Hey, don’t get mad at me. I’m just the messenger. And she’ll box my ears for having given you any message at all.” She flashed a sudden, brilliant grin. “But she’ll get over it. She thinks I’m the cat’s meow. I’ve got forty-seven kills.”

Kills? Did she mean Fae? What was this cocky kid killing them with?

She turned to take off on feet that might as well have been winged, and I knew I had no chance of catching her. Why couldn’t I have gotten superhuman speed? I could have used it dozens of times already.

“Mac,” she shot over her shoulder, “one more thing, and if you tell Rowena I told you, I’ll lie. But you need to know. There are no males among us. Never have been. Whatever your employer is, he’s not one of us.”

I made my way back through the Temple Bar District, with its snatches of music spilling from open windows and boisterous patrons stumbling from open pub doors.

The first time I’d ever walked into this part of the city, I’d gotten whistles and catcalls, and had enjoyed them all. I’d been the kind of girl who dressed for attention, in an eye-catching outfit with all the right accessories. Tonight, in baggy clothes and sensible running shoes, with no makeup and rain-slicked hair, my passage through the craic-filled party district went unnoticed, unremarked, and I was grateful for it. The only crowd I was interested in was the one in my head, thoughts crammed into every nook and cranny of my brain, elbowing each other out of the way to get my attention.